


and then consented to be wrecked

by eclenic



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angsty with a less angsty ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Smut, any semblance of actual plot is accidental, but then so is lucy, this is a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2018-12-19
Packaged: 2019-09-23 02:52:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17072102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eclenic/pseuds/eclenic
Summary: Night, though, is hers. Night is when she gets to fall apart. Perhaps inevitably, when she feels that way, there is only one place she seems to end up.





	and then consented to be wrecked

**Author's Note:**

> I've been saying for ages that I should practice my smut, since it's been a very long time since I wrote any, and, well, I did. Somehow, despite planning to write angsty smut, this is neither the angst nor the smut I intended to write, but there you have it. Lucy wanted to have feelings and I just went with it. 
> 
> Set somewhere undefined after 2x10. Ignore the movie, probably.
> 
> Title comes from _A Thousand Kisses Deep_ , specifically [Jackson Browne's version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf3cBaJheRY), which is well worth the accompanying listen if you like that sort of thing.
> 
> I don't know, pals, I've been sitting on this one for a while but I felt like we needed it today.

The fight drags on. They have plans, ideas about how to do things like get Rufus back and figure out exactly what fresh horror Emma has planned for them next, but it all seems far away and out of reach. Most days are just an exercise in perseverance, in putting one foot in front of the other.

And during the day, Lucy can do that. She can be who they need her to be. Her days belong to the rest of them, and she can do research and make plans and talk about their losses like she doesn’t feel them physically, like missing limbs. She can smile and say she is fine and almost mean it. Nobody says it because nobody has to, but if she stops moving, they all will, so she keeps going even when it feels like her entire life is just a collection of little tragedies, waiting for its newest addition.

Night, though, is hers. Night is when she gets to fall apart. Night is when she gets to be heartbroken and grieving and angry at the entire world for having the audacity to still exist when so many people she loves are no longer in it. There are times when she can’t remember the exact curve of Amy’s smile, when the life she had before all this seems so distant she barely believes it happened at all.

Perhaps inevitably, when she feels that way, there is only one place she seems to end up. Her feet carry her there automatically now, most nights - blindfold her, and she'd be able to find her way to his room by the feel of the floor under her feet, the faint smell of his aftershave.

She used to bring things - books, questions, bottles of vodka, hid behind them like shields, until the fourth or fifth time.

("You don't need an excuse to keep coming here, Lucy," Flynn had said, as he gently took the bottle from her hand and set it to the side. "The door's always open.")

She doesn't even bother to knock any more. She knows what she'll find behind the door - Flynn, invariably sprawled across the bed because it's the one place he actually _fits_ , usually with a book in hand. More recently, somewhere in the bowels of this place he found, fixed and commandeered a TV, and she walks in sometimes to see the glow casting soft shadows over his face.

"What is it tonight, _draga_?" he asks, without preamble, the same gentle smile on his face that seems to always be there when he looks at her.

In the beginning, all she needed - all she was willing to ask for - was for someone to hold her, and she would clamber onto the bed and rest her head on his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart and his voice, quietly murmuring away until she fell asleep.

She remembers the exact moment it turned into something different. They were making do with the way things were, both of them, and god knows _he_ was never going to make the move. The thing is, some days she just needs to touch another person, as a comfort, as a way to convince herself that there are still some things that haven’t changed. It's something she's always done - a hug here, a hand on someone's arm there - and although the circumstances here are a little different, the principle is the same.

And Flynn - well, it's been a long time since somebody touched him out of anything other than violence. Not that he ever says that, but he doesn't have to - it's there, in the way he leans into her fingers, the way he reaches for her in his sleep.

So she kissed him, and the shocked little noise he made into her mouth when she did isn't something she'll forget in a hurry.

Now, when she needs it, he’ll let her lay him out on his bed while her hands roam over him, while she thumbs the lines of every single one of his scars and kisses him like it’s the only thing keeping her breathing. His body is a historical record of everything he's ever done, everything that's ever been done to him, and there's a certainty to that, a proof that he is solid and real.

His fingers will twitch with how much he wants to touch her, but he won’t, not until she asks him to. She’ll make her way down his body with focused intent, feel him practically quake with anticipation and buck his hips when she finally wraps her hand around the length of him. It feels... grounding - him hard and hot in her hand, a chorus of whines and groans escaping his lips, the look on his face as she sinks down onto him. That's when she'll say his name - he is still _Flynn_ most nights, only occasionally _Garcia_ \- but whatever she says, it'll be all the permission he needs to roll his hips underneath her, fly up, and pull her close, their bodies touching everywhere they can. It will be hard, fast, desperate, and exactly what she wants at that moment, her nails leaving marks on his back and her face buried in the crook of his shoulder as she comes.

With a few quick movements, a long and branding kiss, she could ask that of him tonight. And sometimes she thinks he needs it as much as she does, an outlet for all the desperation and frantic _need_ that this kind of life brings out in a person.

But not tonight. She crosses to the bed quietly, with him watching her the entire way, and that first kiss, when she tips his chin up and brushes her lips lightly over his, tells both of them exactly how it will be tonight. This is a night for slow, for gentle, a night to build the dam rather than tear it down.

"Alright," he whispers warmly when she moves back, just a fraction. "I can do that."

It's easier than she ever expected it would be, this. Sometimes there's a voice in her head that sounds suspiciously like Wyatt, one that insists _no, you shouldn't, don't you remember what he's done?_ but it's surprisingly easy to swat aside when faced with the reality of a man who touches her, kisses her, undresses her, like it's the only thing he's ever wanted.

Make no mistake - she is acutely aware that he has given what little remains of his heart to her. It's not a surprise to learn that he loves the same way he does everything else - with a kind of single-minded intensity, a recklessness, that is almost breath-taking to behold.

And really, is she any better than the rest of them? She's fought, she's killed, done things that would horrify any reasonable person. Wars are fought by soldiers, and this is war, so what does that make her? Flynn isn't the only one with a claim to the darkness - there is plenty of it in her, too.

(That might be Rittenhouse talking, the pulse of blood in her veins a constant reminder that her entire existence is dependent on them in more ways than one.)

But oh, oh. It’s like he knows, when she gets like this. His touches go from bold to feather-light, ghosting over her hip, her stomach, her breast, his lips following delicately behind. He keeps doing it until she arches back into his fingers, searching for more. Until she comes back to herself. It’s selfish, she knows, and if she were a better person she would put his heart down, stop this, let him _go_ , but she needs this. Needs him.

He is the only thing that keeps her upright - sometimes literally - who makes her laugh or roll her eyes or feel anything other than fear and dread and loss. He is her refuge, the only calm point in the hurricane that is the rest of her life. Whatever it is she needs, he is the only one she ever asks, and he never says no. He is _hers_ , one of the last things she has, and she’s not sure she would survive losing him, too.

He kisses his way back down her body, each press of lips to skin accompanied by little gentle whispers. She stopped trying to pick up the broken pieces of herself long ago, only to turn around one day and find them in his outstretched hands. When he kisses her, when his lips move over her body and try to press to every spot he knows she likes, it feels a little like some of those pieces slot back into place.

(She looked them up once, the words she could hear, and burst into tears. _My love. My darling. My heart._ )

Lucy gasps out loud when his tongue flicks over her clit, twists her hands in his hair while he takes her apart with his tongue and his fingers.

By all accounts, he shouldn’t still be capable of being this loving, this gentle, this _good_. That was supposed to have been taken from him along with everything else. His hands, his mouth, his body - they should all be iron-forged, made only for war. He shouldn't be able to make her moan and sigh under his fingers, to cover her body with his in the aftermath and whisper to her, when he thinks she's asleep, that she is beautiful, that he loves her, that everything will be okay some day. It's nothing short of a miracle that he can. And he wastes it on her, on someone whose shattered heart is physically incapable of reflecting anywhere near as much of his love back as he deserves.

(It isn’t that she doesn’t love him back. She does. Or she could, at least. It's that so far, every person she's ever trusted with that part of herself has dashed it against the rocks, returned it tattered and unrecognisable, and even if she knows he wouldn’t, she never thought _they_ would, either.)

“Lucy?” God, he says her name dozens of different ways, each one a complete sentence, but this one, thick with need, is her favourite.

Sometimes she doesn't know where he came from. These days it's so, so difficult to line up the man she first met, the one who wanted so much from her, with this one, who asks for nothing, who acts as if it’s a privilege that she is willing to be in the same room as him after all he's done.

She lifts her hand to brush his face, to pull him down and kiss him. It’s as sweet as it can be when they’re already twined up this tightly, though it quickly grows hungry and desperate. She moans into his mouth as he slides into her, and then as he starts to move it’s a chorus of _yes_ and _there_ and _harder_ , and there is nothing, nothing in the world but him moving inside her and how good it feels. This is what she needs, she thinks, to be unwound and taken apart and put back together, to need nothing but the next few moments of _feeling_ , rather than thinking.

The cadence of his thrusts changes, as he gets closer, becoming a little less controlled and precise. Two of his fingers come between them again, and all she can do then is shiver and gasp and grasp at him, her fingertips digging into the flat planes of his shoulders, as he brings her back to the edge again and she willingly spills over. He grins, like he always does, and she feels his hips stutter as he comes a few moments later with her name in his mouth.

"Lucy?" he asks, after, when she's sitting on the edge of the bed and not looking at him. And there's another one, too - it's _are you okay_ and _is there anything I can do_ and _please stay_.

She doesn't always. She wishes she could, every time she hastily shucks her clothes back on and sees his smile fracture on his face. Sometimes it's too much, though, like there's not enough air in the room for both of them, and she needs to get out while she can still breathe.

(She hates, _hates_ that it hurts him, but sometimes she likes that she’s not the only one who can still break.)

She does stay tonight, though, settling against him as he lets out a long, relieved sigh and wraps his arms around her. Her fingertips trace over his collarbone, his jaw, brush his hair away from his face, and she kisses him as gently as she can manage.

"I don't know how you're always so calm," she murmurs against him, and feels him laugh as much as she hears it.

"That's... not a word most people would use to describe me."

"Maybe not out there," Lucy insists, "but here, with me, you are."

The rest of them - if they could see this person, see the good still left in him after everything - they'd understand.

"Maybe I'm just used to chaos," he says, and she shifts against him, looping her arms around his neck, her thumbs brushing along his hairline. "It's not a bad thing, that you're not."

"It's not a good thing, either. Not when I can't..."

_Not when I can't do it alone._

"What?"

"Nothing. It's nothing. I'm just... tired."

"Then _sleep_ ," he says, though that isn't the kind of tired she meant. "The world will still need saving tomorrow."

 _That's the problem_ , she thinks, but she shifts a little closer to him and shuts her eyes. It takes a few minutes, until he thinks she's asleep, but she learned a while ago that it's worth it to stay awake a little longer on these nights.

Flynn starts to whisper, mostly not in English, just a low rumble of syllables in the darkness. There's no translation necessary, though, not when he murmurs _volim te_ like a promise, like a vow. She lies there silently, trying to keep her breathing even, scared he'd stop if he knew she could hear him.

He doesn't, thankfully, his thumb brushing up and down her arm over and over, until he trails off in the middle of a sentence, and when she dares open her eyes, his are closed, sleep smoothing out the lines of his brow.

Then, finally, she sleeps.


End file.
